[Note that I have only seen a demo of this program]

Brainiac gives you easy access to a series of images of the human brain. The program contains four sets of images, Pal-Weigart sections, Gyri and Sulci, coronal sections and horizontal sections. Only the first two are active in the demo. The Pal-Weigart module shows a side view of a human head with 27 lines running through it horizontally, giving the positions of each included section. The program gives you a list of structures, and clicking on any of these shows you which sections contain it. You can then go to the sections themselves, and clicking on any part of one of the sections will light up the brain structure there, tell you the name of the structure, and give a paragraph about the function of the structure. The structures are also color coded by function. One set of arrows lets you move up or down in the brain, and another lets you follow a structure up or down through the brain. There is also a test mode where the program will highlight a structure and ask you for the name, or vis-versa. The Gyri and Sulci module works similarly, as presumably do the other two. The documentation claims that the instructor version lets teachers take out structures they do not want students to see.

While I cannot evaluate this program technically, the user-interface is very well- designed, making it easy to traverse the different pictures in the program and highlight structures in each one. The pictures themselves look clear on our monitor. The online help is simply one long text file, but since the user-interface is good that should be sufficient. As a computerized series of pictures, this program should be quite useful in any class which currently uses real pictures of the human brain anatomy. I would guess that the program could replace previously used textbooks or study guides, since being able to click on a structure and have it light up is a real advantage over the paper equivelants.

Computer: Windows, (Macintosh soon)

Source: Medical Multimedia Systems, 1247 East 70th Street, Brooklyn, New York 11234, USA.
(800) 769-7799 or 718-444-7763. MedMult@AOL.com
Web site with demo at http://www.webcom.com/~medmult

Cost: Low (student), High (teacher, site license)

Last update 22nd of January 1996